PLAYING SB See also "starbases" for a collection of hints ------------------------------ Newsgroups: alt.games.xtrek Date: Sun, 26 Jan 1992 14:12:49 -0500 From: Craig Boas Subject: Starbase Help File Hi All! This is the file I posted last semester with the intent of fixing it and reposting... I consider it finished at this point, but if anyone has suggestions please send them. ============================================================================== Balton's Guide to Playing a Starbase By Craig Boas, cb39@andrew.cmu.edu Thanks to Kevin Michael Bernatz kb32+@andrew.cmu.edu for editorial help Starbases are unique among ships in netrek in that they always play a supporting role. Starbases are prohibited from orbiting planets owned by other races, even friendly ones. As a base, you should concentrate on making yourself an asset to your team by going to planets which are being contested and either clearing the way for your team's planet-takers or defending it from potential enemies. Your other functions are to draw attention from ships with armies, carry armies to protect them from bombing, and give kills to your own team's planet takers. However, if you are unable to hold a very aggressive position (ie close to the enemy home planet) don't throw the base away trying. The first order of business, naturally, is survival. If you are unable to live without a large escort, you are probably hurting more than helping your team. Although your low speed makes you an easier target than most ships, that fact allows you to turn rather quickly, something you need to exploit if you are to survive. Practicing dogfighting in a battleship at low warp is a good way to learn how to dodge at these speeds. Nonetheless, when being attacked, you tend to get hit by more photon torpedoes than most other ships, and as such you should concentrate on eliminating enemies before they are able to whittle you down with occasional hits. You should also learn how to use tractors and pressors to help yourself and others avoid photon torpedoes. A good base player can estimate how a nearby teammate will dodge and tractor or pressor appropriately to keep the player from being hit. When in doubt do not help a teammate dodge as you may end up causing them to hit photon torpedoes they would have been able to escape. It is best to use enemies as tractor/pressor points to help you dodge photon torpedoes since you don't mind if they take damage. If all else fails, pressoring the ship that fired will give you extra room to dodge since you will be moving away from the offending ship more quickly. Detonating enemy photon torpedoes is a trade-off between weapon temperature and damage. Detonating causes all torpedoes in range to explode in place and damage you, but not nearly as severely as if they had hit. On most servers detonating enemy photon torpedoes does *NOT* hurt your teammates, and as such is a valid way to keep ships docked on your base from taking damage. It is much better for you to detonate photon torpedoes than to let the ship explode on you as a docked ship's explosion will inflict 100 points of damage, 75 if it's a scout. In the event that you are faced with many photon torpedoes and a docked ship, pressoring the ship is often the optimal course since this gets both of you away from the photon torpedoes. Detonating costs approximately 2 weapon temperature per use. Holding the detonate key down results in rapidly increasing weapon temperature, so tapping it several times when incoming photon torpedoes are in range (about one ship length away) is the best way to proceed. You should always watch your weapon temperature closely when detonating photon torpedoes since detonation does increase it. Occasionally, you will not be able to dodge all the photon torpedoes you wanted to. In this case, try to minimize your damage as much as possible. If you take a bad hit, move away soon. Not only will this allow you more time to repair between attacks, it will also move you closer to your teammates. Remember, you serve your team no purpose if you have to keep going to a repair planet. It is important to remember that if you appear hurt, you will probably be comprehensively ogged. There are few things that will throw your enemies into a killing frenzy faster than someone yelling that your base is moving warp 1. Accordingly, if you are particularly unhurt (you took an ogg that *looked* ugly but not much damage) go warp 1 and move back to convince the enemy team you are on your last legs. At the same time, inform your team that you are not that hurt so they don't waste time flocking to save you. This tactic should only be employed in conjunction with a teammate who is going to take a heavily defended planet under cloak since it may well result in your demise if enough enemies join in the ogg. If your weapon temperature exceeds 130, your weapons will almost certainly become inoperable for a number of seconds. The exact time is random, and whether or not they actually overheat depends on how far over 130 you go, but it is to be avoided at almost all costs! A starbase without weapons is a sitting duck for any enemies who decide to strike. However, it is vital to remember that your cloaking device and your tractor/pressor beams are independent of weapons systems and can be used to buy time by hiding or pushing enemies away until your weapons reactivate. To avoid overheating your weapons you must guide your attacking strategy by your current weapon temperature. If you have little or no heat (approximately 35 or less), a plasma torpedo is an option, but only at a cloaked ship. The reason for this is that others are likely to blow it up on top of you if they are close enough (your plasma torpedoes have the shortest range of any ship, though they do the most damage). Your phasers are your most potent weapons, and this is due not only to their range and power, but also to the fact that you can fire them every 4 ticks rather than every 10 as with other ships (a tick is approximately a tenth of a second). this essentially makes your phasers do 2.5 times the damage, for a maximum of 300 points in the time it takes a battleship (the ship with the next best phasers) to do 105. Considering that *no* ship has 300 shields will give you an idea of just how powerful your phasers are since you can kill even an assault ship in less than the time it takes for one of its phasers to disperse. Of course these damage figures are for phasering at point blank range (something you will hopefully not do too often!) they should give you some idea of how dangerous they are. The disadvantage to this is that each time you fire phasers you add 9.6 to your weapon temperature and only disperse this at .4 per click. This is equivalent to firing just under 5 photon torpedoes. In the short run, this is not a problem. You can kill even an assault ship at moderate range without overheating, but if there are other enemies around, you should concentrate on using photon torpedoes. photon torpedoes do not significantly heat up your weapons (only 2 per photon torpedo). You should always fire them in preference to (or at least in concert with) another weapon. Although your photon torpedoes are only average speed and do only moderate damage, your advantage lies in the fact that you get what amounts to an unlimited number of them because of the starbase's tremendous fuel reserves and fuel regeneration rate. You should fire a cluster of them at cloakers to try and hit at least once, and then phaser the explosion to get a "phaser-lock". This trick tends to allow you to do excellent phaser damage without overheating your weapons by missing with phasers. Learning to use tractors and pressors is crucial. Not only do they help you stay alive, but they are also the best way to kill enemies quickly. You should learn how to judge the movements of tractored ships, and fire your photon torpedoes where they will be pulled to. If an enemy is crippled and a teammate has fired upon him, using tractors or pressors to push or pull the enemy ship into the incoming photon torpedoes will prevent it from dodging and give your teammate a kill. A good starbase player gives kills away at every opportunity since he doesn't need them. This requires some judgment and experience to do well, and usually involves taking some damage, but is worthwhile if you can do it. The standard method is to phaser and torpedo an enemy ship until it is about to explode, then pressor it towards a teammate, who can hit it last and blow it up while it fires at you. This sort of behavior makes you a true asset to your team and a good player besides. At the same time, if the situation is not favorable to this sort of maneuver, as it often is not in the presence of multiple oggers or a single cloaker, killing the enemy is an acceptable and necessary alternative. Always pressor oggers that charge at you while uncloaked as soon as they are within range so they do not get close enough to inflict serious damage. As a final note on tractors, you should tractor friendly ships coming towards you if you think they want to dock, and break tractors as their ship overlaps yours so you do not accidentally tractor them off of you after they dock. This seemingly simple maneuver actually requires some practice to get right. Friendly ships flashing shields and heading at you often are requesting a tractor beam to help them dock more quickly and are often hurt. While playing a base the most important display to watch the galactic map. You MUST do this even if enemies are currently on your screen. If you don not, you will fall prey to oggers who attack when you are already engaged. This is the main difference between an average base player, and a good base player. You should observe the "group" movements of the enemies. If a large group seems to be headed your way, move back immediately. If you are ogged from more than one direction, pressor one while moving away and kill the one(s) you are moving towards. This will place you as far as possible from the point your enemies are converging upon. In a well coordinated ogg, you will often have people coming in both cloaked and uncloaked. In this case, it is imperative that you pressor the uncloaked ship as soon as it is in range. Once you do that, you will be moving away from all oggers (at least from that direction) at a much greater speed. You should then fire at the other ships first, since they are the most dangerous threat (the pressored ship will close very slowly). If more than one enemy is uncloaked, you should kill the non-pressored uncloaked people as quickly as possible, changing targets only if the cloaked ships seem to be getting very close to you. In cases like this, it is usually unwise to fire plasma torpedoes since they will probably get phasered on top of you. In starbase to starbase combat, the base with more support usually wins. If you see that your teammates are coming to help and you aren't too damaged, be aggressive, tractor the enemy base keep it from retreating without getting so close you get caught in its explosion. In this type of combat, photon torpedoes are the weapon of choice. Don't get so caught up in trying to hit him that you forget to dodge. Fire your photon torpedoes and weave back and forth. It is often bad to detonate photon torpedoes, since you are increasing your weapon temperature and taking damage; in a starbase vs. starbase battle you will need all the weapon temperature you can get. If you get close enough, you should consider phasering until your weapons get hot (but be careful not to overheat, 80-100 is about the highest you should go). In starbase vs. starbase combat you should *never* fire a plasma torpedo. With your opponent's exceptional phaser range and recharge speed, it is almost guaranteed to be phasered on top of you. There are a couple of exceptions to this: 1) You KNOW the enemy base has blown his weapons, or 2) He is currently very, very occupied with oggers. You must also consider your weapon temperature vs. the extra damage from the plasma. Finally, if the enemy base starts to tractor you, pressor him and and in the direction away from him. If you forget to move in the opposite direction, he will still gain on you. In the event that you believe you will lose the battle, tractor and move towards the enemy base and fire all weapons irrespective of weapon temperature since your weapons will not actually break until you stop firing. Most of being a good starbase beyond just surviving is learning to be in the right place at the right time. Be in the wrong place and at best hordes of enemies will converge on you and kill you. At worst you will drift off alone as all foes give you a wide berth since you are simply not doing anything except occupying one of your team's player slots. You should almost always be in one of the following states: 1) Picking up armies (from front line planets) 2) Guarding a weak planet, 3) Supporting the front line, 4) Helping take an enemy planet 5) Repairing or 6) Drawing enemy fire. At the same time, you should act as an army storehouse if you feel able to stay alive and there are armies on your side. Hoarding armies is discussed below. Guarding a weak planet is obvious, it takes time and coordination for your foes to have a prayer of taking a planet with an observant starbase there. Supporting the front line involves sitting slightly behind it while tractoring hurt ships out of battle and acting as a roving refuel and repair point. If your team has no fuel/repair planets on one side of your front, go to that side if you are not clearly needed elsewhere. Getting around as a base isn't as simple as in other ships. Although you can simply go somewhere, it's slow. If you need to be somewhere fast, get a tow. This involves getting a teammate or three to go where you want to be while you tag along with a tractor beam. You should tractor at least one of the towers. The towers should go warp 8 so that they do not break out of your tractor or get pulled back to your base. Don't forget to lock on to the tower, so you don't have your movement is working with your tractors. Watch your weapon temperature when employing this tactic to be certain that you do not overheat. If you do, you will be restricted to warp one and will be without your tractor/pressor beams until they repair. Unless you are under nearly constant fire or very damaged, repairing can be done in transit since you move slowly and repair quickly with shields down. Drawing enemy fire is most effectively done by moving forwards and attracting attention when someone else on your team wants to enter enemy space unnoticed to bomb or take planets. Carrying armies seems self-explanatory and it is for the most part. You should carry armies to prevent them from being bombed and to keep them accessible (so planet takers do not have to fly around gathering them) The only important thing to note here is that you should play a bit more defensively (ie: closer to your home planet) if you are carrying a significant proportion of your team's armies. Also, you should periodically post to the team message board how many you are carrying so that your team will know if it's time to make a delivery of armies to you or if they can expect to be able to pick up armies at the base. As your team's starbase, you will occasionally be called upon to deal with enemy robots. Never use plasma on them as they will *always* blow it up on top of you. Since you are only moving warp 2, it will be very difficult to dodge their photon torpedoes. The best strategy is to tractor the hapless robot and quickly phaser it to death. You will take damage, (200 points is about average for killing an uninjured robot without assistance once you get good at it) but it's quick. In an otherwise even game, an enemy robot can easily unbalance a game if left alive. If the robot is in as a base, you should run while pressoring him and keep firing photon torpedoes, which will cause him to veer off. Inevitably you will be damaged, badly. In this situation, start moving directly away from the enemy home planet (so oggers have to travel further to reach you) and send a distress call. If you are alone and hurt badly enough to be unable to move faster than warp one, cloak until a friendly ship arrives on your screen since this sign of weakness will be seized upon by your enemies as a call to obliterate you. Pressoring enemies (if any) is a quick way to get home since it both slows them down and speeds you up. As soon as there is a friendly ship on your screen, tractor or pressor it as appropriate to speed your trip to the nearest repair planet, or your home planet if the damage is severe enough. As a final note, do not abuse the distress call. Use it only when badly hurt or you really need your team (such as when you are about to enter combat with the enemy base) or they will tend not to come when you really need them. t A starbase is about the best cover any prospective planet taker could hope for. If an enemy planet is contested and you are there as the starbase, you should destroy all hostile ships in the area. If there are too many enemies, placing yourself between them and the planet works in conjunction with detonating photon torpedoes so that a teammate can slip in behind you and take the planet unmolested. One final clue, split damage. In most ships, taking internal (hull) damage has a detrimental effect on your ship's performance in terms of top speed. However, since you don't suffer the effects of damage in a base until internal damage exceeds 400 points, you should attempt to take roughly one point of damage internally for every two points you take on your shields. This is more important than some people realize because shields and hull repair simultaneously. This technique substantially increases your repair rate leaving you more time to help your team. Good luck! Notes: Remember to enable docking with the "e" key. This allows ships to lock on and dock at your base to repair, refuel, and pick up or beam down armies. Your teammates will most likely get upset if you leave it deactivated. You will know when it is enabled by searching for the "D" docking flag by your alerts. To deal with the player who locks on and cloaks (eating your fuel the whole time), hit "e" twice (toggle docking permission off then on again) so all ships currently locked on break off. If the person continues in this behavior, disable docking until he tires and tell your team about it. Remapping tractors to an easily accessible key is desirable since you will be using it often. Having it right next to pressors is also important since often when an enemy ship realizes it is doomed, it will turn around and try to ram. You have to be quick to pressor or you will tend to take severe damage. Having the detonate photon torpedoes key accessible is also useful since you will be doing a lot of detonating as a base. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- End of PLAYING SB *****************